Family Photo Struggles

Our family photos are something of a joke around here, because no matter how much I plan and wish and hope they are always spectacularly bad.  You would think that I would have learned by now that part of what I always end up loving about them, much, much later is how they sum up the personality of our family.

I will admit that pretty much the only time I struggle with envy is when I see photos of a bunch of kids and they're all lined up and looking at the camera and smiling.  And I can't help but think "guys, come on, can't you do that for 3 seconds.

But alas.  That is not us.  Even for .3 seconds.  Even if the lady at the Santa for kids with autism photo shoot takes twenty photos.

In the beginning, it was easy to get a family photo:

And even once Sadie came along, she usually cooperated.  In the beginning at least:

And then Maggie arrived.  And the photos still had a chance of turning out the way I'd hoped:

But by the time Patch arrived everyone looking the same direction was a distant memory:

And often time hilarity followed:

Can everyone look at the camera?

No.  No they cannot.

The photographer exclaimed that getting this photo was a challenge to the twenty years of tricks he had up his sleeve.

And when I tried to get photos of all the kids together?  This was pretty typical:

Then James added his Grumpy Baby frowns.

And so last year when I read that there was a time for kids with special needs to get their photo taken with Santa I was thrilled.  The kids had a blast and the picture was really, really good (for our family):

So perhaps I was overly optimistic when I saw the ad on Facebook to sign up to see Santa again.

The kids were extremely excited in the car.  They had a great time before and after.  Lots of giggles and laughter.  They had a blast.

But every time the camera snapped...  chaos.

This was the best of many, many photos:

The more I look at it, the more it makes me laugh.

Maybe next year... maybe...

And maybe not!